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Kitchen Makeover

Giving Your Kitchen a New Year Makeover

If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to start renovating your home, why not start in the kitchen? It’s one of the rooms where you spend the most time, so it makes sense to start there. Renovating your kitchen doesn’t have to cost a fortune either and you can do it in small stages to really spread the cost. Here’s how to do a kitchen makeover.

New Worktops
Buying new units can be pretty costly, so save some money by replacing the worktops only. Laminate is the most affordable material, but even the likes of granite are not too expensive. If you have some more cash to spare, why not treat yourself to a built in draining board. You will be surprised at how much difference you can make to the kitchen simply by replacing the worktops.

Paint Cabinets
If you really don’t have a lot of money to spare, one of the ways that you can make an enormous difference to your kitchen is to paint the cabinets. A tin of paint can cost less than £10, and a new statement colour really makes an impact. If the rest of your kitchen is cream or white, try painting the units a pastel colour. To make your paint last longer, sand the units down first and coat them with a primer.

Change the Floor
Traditional kitchens work well with oak or wooden floors, whilst modern kitchens can make a statement with vinyl flooring. If you’re worried about the hassle of taking up the kitchen floor, don’t be! You should be able to run it from unit to unit to save you taking everything out, and you may even be able to lay the flooring on top of the existing floor.

Change Doors and Handles
If you have already gone to the trouble of painting your cabinets, or even if you haven’t, why not try changing the handles too? Handles are really cheap to purchase on sites like eBay or in your local DIY store. If you didn’t paint your cabinets, you could change the doors too – go for crisp white if your kitchen is modern, or wooden for a shaker style kitchen.

Lighting
Your kitchen needs a mixture of different lighting. Over the cooking areas you need task lighting, and over the dining/seating areas you need ambient lighting which will help you relax. New and innovative forms of lighting are always coming to the market – for instance, you can install undercabinet lighting over your stove and worktops to eliminate shadows whilst you are cooking. Most of these lights plug in to your mains supply or are battery operated, so it is a simple kitchen makeover DIY job to install them.

Improve Storage
This is perfect if your New Year’s resolution is to be more organised – adding extra storage to your kitchen. Pull-out drawers can add space to your cupboard, or you could add a display shelf above your window. Plate racks are an effective wall storage solution, whilst you can fill in awkward spaces between cabinets and the floor with wooden baskets. You should also set aside some time to reorganise your existing storage – you might be surprised by how much you have collected unnecessarily over the years.

Accessories
Once you’ve organised your kitchen storage, add some accessories to tie the room together. Display your favourite items on open shelving. You can use accessories to develop a theme in your kitchen – if your decor is more traditional, you may wish to choose cute country-style accents such as jars and patterns, whereas modern kitchens will work better with sleek metallic pieces.

Use the Sink to Add Character
It’s quite easy to change your sink, but before you do so, you should consider how you use it. If you don’t own a dishwasher, one with a double bowl may be more practical for you. For traditional kitchens, white sinks will add a country feel to the kitchen, whilst copper or stainless steel sinks are ideal for a modern kitchen makeover.

Buy a Used Kitchen
If you have a little bit more budget to spend or your current kitchen is beyond restoration, why not buy a used kitchen? On sites like Used Kitchen Exchange, you can purchase a used kitchen for a fraction of the original price, including designer kitchens and ex-showroom kitchens which have barely been used. The kitchens are always assessed for their quality before they are listed for sale, and you can arrange to view them before you commit to a purchase.